Perfidious
by syndomatic
Summary: He's not a good person. — Ritchie


I own nothing. Reuploaded.

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**per·fid·i·ous:**  
_(adj.) deceitful and untrustworthy._

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Ritchie's not a good person.

He is many things: a good, upstanding citizen, a well-adjusted boy, a half-decent trainer with starry eyes and a childhood dream, someone who'd make the world a better place if he was ever given the chance to own it—but not a good person. Not really.

Ritchie does nice things when he can. He makes his bed in the morning, he eats all his vegetables, and he spends his days exploring with Zippo and Sparky and Happy, and not smoking or making private jokes in empty classrooms like some of his other peers do.

But the fact is: he doesn't care. He would've left the room in a mess if he was running late, and he would've given his broccoli and spinach to Zippo to burn if he wanted to, and he would've cancelled the routine walk with his pokémon if his classmates cared enough to let him in their circle instead of laughing at his propositions like they always do.

But in the end, he doesn't.

(It's just—he doesn't have any other choice, really. So why not?)

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It starts like this:

On his ninth birthday, his father sends him a box with a pokéball and an envelope inside, his mother's name etched in black ink over the creased white paper. It is the last time he ever hears of him—Ritchie's not surprised.

He spends the rest of the day with his back against his bedroom door, pokéball in hand, eyes closed and trying his best to drown out the sobbing downstairs amongst radio static.

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He decides he wants to be a trainer when he turns ten, young enough to be reckless and too old to be bound by the monotony of his hometown. Ritchie doesn't know why, though; monotony is fine, Frodomar is fine. He likes spending his nights stargazing from the untouched fields of grass over the edge of the town; playing hide-and-seek with his friends between tree trunks and canopies; reading storybooks in his room until it's late and he's practically struggling to keep himself awake in class the next day. And isn't that enough?

So he keeps the registration paper in the bottom drawer of his desk, collecting dust like most of his dreams—and everything is normal. Ritchie's always been particularly good at getting by, after all.

But that was years ago, he realizes. He's eleven, now, older, stronger, desperate to break out, for a release—and all of a sudden, the stars and grass and forests and storybooks he's known since he was old enough to remember are no longer enough for him.

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Pokémon battles and type matchups don't endear to his friends, he realizes too late, and he soon excludes himself from routine conversations and after school activities in favor of training and watching tournaments on his living room's outdated television, while they resign themselves to smoking and making private jokes in empty classrooms and all of a sudden they're no longer talking; he doesn't find it in him to correct them, fails to find the point in trying to fix something that isn't broken.

Ritchie leaves without saying goodbye to them and he allows himself to be forgotten. It is for the best, after all, he tells himself, blinking back the dust trapped between his eyelashes.

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The day he leaves, his mother looks at him in the eye and tells him how much she loves him, to please, please call home, I'll miss you so much. And Ritchie wants to reply with something equally sentimental, something reassuring and comforting—_"I know, I will, I promise,"_—but he can't. He can't find the right words, even though he's Ritchie and Ritchie always knows what to say.

He feigns her a flimsy, sad smile, instead, trying to ignore the exasperation parading in his chest—_"I just want to go, I'll miss the bus, mom,"_—and he suppresses the joy that threatens to swallow him when her figure is a dot in the horizon, when he is absolutely sure that he is free from the constraints of a sleepy town he calls—once called—home.

She waves, one last time, and Ritchie doesn't wave back.

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Exactly two months and a week into his league quest, he changes his pokégear number. He calls her only for the sake of closure—it goes straight to voice-mail. He leaves a message about the usual things: the weather, his progress, hollow remarks about how big Kanto is. It's quite sad that their conversations have deteriorated into a chore, he thinks as he finally hangs up, tosses his phone card into the trash.

He's not sorry—he always saw it coming, anyway. So why delay the inevitable?

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The lodge is small and quaint and the wood smells of pine. He decides he hates it the moment he enters; it reminds him too much of his old room, he thinks, but he's Ritchie and Ritchie never complains. That's just how it is.

He arrives too early; there are still four hours before the opening ceremony even starts. He clips his pokéballs into his belt and leaves without closing the door (because there's nothing to steal), to breathe some fresh air before the time comes.

He gazes at the polished badges on his case, and at that moment he knows he's going to lose in the end, anyway; he just likes to play games with himself, pretending and deceiving. But Ritchie's an optimist, too, as far as he knows, and despite the sweet irony of it all, a part of him still hopes, still feels a desire to be better.

He can't find a reason to _why._

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The food court downstairs is bumbling and noisy, with its greasy tables and impatient patrons, but the chef makes heavenly sandwiches and Ritchie manages to find a table.

A girl sits adjacent to him; her black-blue hair brushing against her forehead and a bulbasaur lazily resting on her lap. She is calm, almost fragile, and Ritchie thinks that something is off-kilter with her every motion, the way she looks at the world through half-lidded eyes. She reminds him of gentle breezes and sunlight and wilted flowers—fleeting memories.

Something in him spins, and he greets her, in that detached, impersonal way that he is. He remembers to smile.

She smiles back, a subtle turn of her lips, then blinks, and he can see the hollowness behind her gestures; he flinches when he first notices. He wonders if she sees it in him, too.

Neither of them leave. They talk about inconsequential matters, with him spilling nonsense about his pokémon journey, and her restrained sentences with carefully-picked words, about her home in Lavender and her brief stint as a coordinator before she moved to Kanto.

Soon, their meals are finished and they run out of (unimportant) things to talk about. They just—sit there, waiting, observing the trainers come and go until they're the only two left. He feels her critical gaze on him, analyzing and picking apart the most simplistic parts of him to search for something that isn't there; he knows because he's doing it, too, as if a force of habit.

The intercom sounds, then, a pleasant voice reminding them that the opening ceremony is about to begin. She takes her leave first, not forgetting to say good luck; he watches her walk away for a brief few seconds before he follows.

"What's your name?" he asks, once he catches up to her.

A beat passes. "Assunta," she replies, and she opens her mouth, as if to say something. She doesn't.

"That's nice," he comments offhandedly, not really expecting an answer. "My name's Ritchie." The name sounds unfamiliar when he says it, like it doesn't really belong to him.

But she's already gone.

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He wins the first round, to his own surprise, and when he catches her face in a crowd, he calls her and flashes a victorious, manufactured grin. She turns around, registers his face in her memory, and allows herself a small, yet sincere, smile, before disappearing into the faces of unfamiliar trainers.

His pokégear rings, a familiar number on its screen, but he is too busy searching for her to care.

Afterwards, he goes to the food court. Only for dinner, he reassures himself, but Sparky's giving him that _look_ and he can't remember the last time he's lied this obviously. It's disgraceful.

She's not there, of course; and he doesn't understand why, but something inside him cracks and snaps and he looks away, forgetting all about dinner and the chef's heavenly sandwiches.

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"Hold the door, please!"

Looking back, he thinks that perhaps, this is the moment he's lost.

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**A/N: **Idk. Maybe this is bad.

I've never watched the anime before; I've heard that the seasons are unrelated, so I watched them out of order. Really, I'm only interested because apparently it introduces a lot of one-time, unimportant characters—sounds interesting to me.

Trip is great, though. I like him.


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